Howl Offers Promotion Only a Franco Could Love

The upcoming James Franco movie Howl, which revolves around the Ginsberg poem’s obscenity trial, has a social media promotion that allows users to submit phrases and vote on whether or not they are “obscene.” This should go great!

People seem pretty united on the idea that pornography — in all its variants, no need to get into specifics here — is obscene. More interesting are the terms where the votes were equally divided between “obscene” and “not obscene”: these phrases include “Republicans,” “The State of the Music Industry” and “Calling your own kids ‘assholes.'”

With a trailer that features people smoking and Jon Hamm, it’s clear that the makers of Howl have cultivated the 1950s aesthetic so it’s weird that they’d offer us something so Web 7.0 to promote the movie. We’re 38% obscene, according to the site, whatever that means. Oh, and Rex Reed didn’t like the movie.